3 Surprising Things a Home Automation System Can Do

A home automation can act like your own personal assistant.

The primary function of any home automation system is, well, to automate the electronic systems in your house. At certain times and under certain conditions, it can turn lights and A/V equipment on and off; raise and lower motorized window shades and regulate the thermostats. But there’s more to a home automation system that its ability to put your home on automatic pilot. When programmed by a custom electronics (CE) professional, a home automation system can help you remember important dates, tell you when your teenage daughter got home and give you a bird’s eye view of what’s happening in every corner of your house … and more. Here are three surprising ways a home automation system can help you better manage your life:

1. It’s Wednesday. You know what that means … or did you forget?
A home automation system can be programmed to play a prerecorded message over the speakers in your house to remind you to take out the trash, call your mom or any other task that commonly slips your mind.

2. What time did you get home young lady?
You’ll see right through your teenagers attempt at deception when there’s a home automation system to log the exact time she walked through the front door … or any door for that matter. Just pop onto the security log page, and you’ll see a timestamp of every sensor that was tripped, including the sensors on the exterior doors.

3. Open, shut, on or off?
It’s difficult to remember which lights you used and where, which windows you may have opened and which doors you may have forgotten to lock. With a home automation system, you can see in an instant by peering at the screen of a touchpanel or your iPad or iPhone the status of every electronic device in your house, including the sensors that track the position of the doors and windows.